


Savage Beauty

by Ladywolfsbane



Category: Original Work, exophilia - Fandom, teratophilia - Fandom
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Alien Romance, Alien/Human Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, Exophilia, F/M, Human Experimentation, Human/Monster Romance, Science Fiction, Slow-ish burn, Strong Language, Teratophilia, Unethical Experimentation, Xenophilia, aliens are inspired by eusocial insects, eventual mild lemon-rated content, mild-ish body horror, some horror elements, some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28021014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladywolfsbane/pseuds/Ladywolfsbane
Summary: Roni Wildcraft, a two-bit thief and smuggler, has now become an imprisoned lab experiment.She just wants to get the hell out of there — and so does the alien trapped in the room next to her.
Relationships: Alien/Human - Relationship, Original Female Character(s)/Original Non-Human Character(s)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to my shamelessly self indulgent alien romance! I hope you enjoy it. The alien main character is going to show up in the next chapter, and it will be from his POV.

The peeling patch of skin on the back of her hand had worsened.

Roni had only noticed it after washing her face and getting ready to warm a pre-prepared meal.  
She sat down on the edge of her bed, landing hard on the stiff mattress. Dr. Spurling told her that the flaking and peeling was likely a reaction to the serum — it was still in its experimental phases, after all. That was the point of the study she was participating in: refining and testing the serum. They’d adjusted the dosage to see if that would reduce the skin irritation.

“Damn lot of good that did,” Roni muttered, absently scratching at her hand with her nails.

Her upper lip twitched with a grimace. The spot didn’t just itch. It burned. Her nails pressed in deeper, dragging at her flesh, trying to relieve the sensation.

No, bad idea, she thought. Better to see if the bathroom medicine cabinet contained any anti-itch ointment.

She crossed the short space of her assigned room to the bathroom. Raising her hand to open the cabinet, she stopped, fingers hovering in the air.

Red lines crisscrossed the back of her hand where she’d scratched. Dry skin peeled off in uneven patches, like the thin, flaking paper of an onion. In the center of the red marks, the skin had completely peeled away and revealed a small, dark black spot. Under the white bathroom lights, the area seemed to glitter.

Her gut clenched. There were exotic diseases out there in the universe that could give you all kinds of exotic splotches and marks.

Thrullen Plague was one particular disease that sprang to mind — it involved parts of the skin darkening and hardening until it spread to the organs and ossified them.

She clutched the sides of the sink with her fingers. The cold of the damp porcelain did nothing to quell the sick, hot feeling oozing up the back of her throat.

Another symptom of whatever this was?

Did some strange disease escape the McKnight Industries lab? As far as she knew, none of the scientists took samples out of the lab and into the dormitory where research participants like her lived.

But who knew, perhaps some rogue intern had wanted to show off a deadly disease to a buddy that had volunteered for an unrelated study?

Her jaw clenched hard, and she remained gripping the edge of the sink. If there was nothing to brace her, then her legs might give out.

With an inhale, Roni pushed a mental hand down on her spiking nerves.

This was a groundbreaking research company. If she’d caught something, they could easily remedy the situation. And, hell, hadn’t she faced worse than this in her long career of thieving? Almost getting knifed? Now that was more call for panic than this. She’d survived that just fine.

One by one, she lifted her fingers from the bathroom sink. The surface was now warm from how long and hard she’d be clutching onto it.

While she still trusted her legs to move and hold her up, she walked to the nightstand and swiped her palm over the slick surface.

Several icons appeared on the shiny screen that doubled as a nightstand. One icon was a blue, glowing image shaped like an antiquated stethoscope. Somehow, that symbol had become inextricably rooted in human culture to signify the profession of healer.

She tapped her index finger on the icon.

“Hello, Ms. Wildcraft,” came a polite female voice from the screen. “It seems you’re not feeling well. Would you like to send for a healthcare professional or consult with your supervising investigator, Dr. Spurling?”

“Get Spurling in here right the fuck now,” Roni said. Normally, she would be more courteous with AI, but her heart felt like it was going to make a prison break through her ribs.

“Understood. Dr. Maxwell Spurling will see you shortly,” said the AI, gracious as ever.

All that was left was the waiting. No longer certain her legs wouldn’t turn into liquid, Roni slumped onto the bed.

* * *

  
A light practically glowed in Dr. Spurling’s eyes when he saw the black spot on the back of her hand.

“You say you only noticed this spot this morning?” Spurling adjusted his large glasses. Spurling was a middle-aged man with a round face and thinning gray hair along the top of his head. Still, despite his noticeable male pattern baldness, most of his features remained free of obvious wrinkles. The only visible ones were the smile lines around his eyes.

Roni sighed. “Yes, my hand started itching like hell after I washed my face, so I scratched it, I went to get some ointment, and then I noticed this weird black spot. It’s hard too.” She tapped at it.

She’d already told this to Spurling. Roni learned early on during the study that she had to be patient with him. He’d ask the same questions more than once to be sure he got all the right information.

“And the day before you only noticed skin irritation? No significant flaking or peeling?” Spurling waved his hand over a thin tablet, the same dark color as the screen built into the nightstand. The tablet flickered to life.

“Well, there was some flaking, but no weird spots at all.”

He pushed his glasses back up his nose. Glasses weren’t strictly necessary anymore, not with accessible eye surgeries. But a few still declined surgery, and some simply wore glasses because they thought it made them look more approachable or academic.

“That means it’s working.” That strange glow was back in his eyes and he was smiling like he’d won the Interplanetary Coalition lottery.

Her shoulders lifted beneath her ears. Something felt off, like when a business deal was about to go south. “I … don’t think so. I mean, you said that serum shit would make me stronger, not give me a weird alien disease.”

Spurling put the tablet down. “It’s not a disease. It’s a ‘becoming.’”

“A what?” Roni couldn’t help but snort despite her pounding heart.

“I’m afraid we haven’t been entirely honest with you, but it was necessary for the success of this project. The serum isn’t just meant to strengthen you.”

The edge of her lip was twitching. This was exactly like a deal going south. She’d been double-crossed, she’d been naïve— “Then what the hell does it do?”

“It turns you into a V’rakiss.”

An image flashed before her mind’s eye — a tall, insectile being with flashing claws, twitching antennae-like tendrils, and a venomous, barbed tail. Some hives invaded entire human colonies, decimating the population until the bugs were the only dominant life forms.

And she was going to be one of those things. He’d known all along.

With that realization, Roni’s control snapped, and she launched herself at Spurling.

She held no knife, no pistol, no blaster. All she had was her blunt nails. Her hands stretched toward his throat with the intention of throttling him. It would be so simple. His throat was there, exposed and vulnerable, pulse pounding just beneath his jaw. Just a tight squeeze and —

A shock rocked her body, and her head hit the floor before her index finger could even brush his throat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the chapter in which we meet the male lead! I hope you enjoy this chapter. It's a little longer than the first, but I needed to set some groundwork for the V'rakiss.  
> And if you want to see a drawing I've done of Valeantris, scroll to the end.

A blue-black heap of chitin unwound himself from the corner of the room. The aroma of a Queen wafted into his environment.

Valeantris’ tendrils raised, and he hissed to himself. The humans had decided to capture another Queen? They didn’t care at all what damage they inflicted on V’rakiss hives.

He began to stand, joints popping from days of disuse. Lately, his captors were leaving him alone for long periods. During those stretches, he lapsed into semi-hibernation. Valeantris wouldn’t give them the pleasure of watching him pace and claw at the walls like he had in the early days of his confinement.

Now standing on two legs, he walked to the glass covering the front of his holding room. Glaring lights automatically flicked down the length of the hallway than ran in front of his enclosure.

The cloying scent of Queen grew stronger. He crouched down and placed his snout near the food slot — the only gap in the room that he’d discovered.

His jaws gaped, allowing the smell to permeate the sensory organ in the back of his mouth. The fragrance clouded his mind, and he pressed his body closer to the food slot, his chitin clicking and scratching against the glass.

A longing throbbed within him. He had been so long without the companionship of his own kind. The unnatural silence of his mind could have driven him to madness had he not practiced control techniques.

“Huh, looks like the bug seems interested. Haven’t seen him move in days.”

Valeantris’ eyes flickered open. He lay a hand against the glass. Two men progressed gradually down the hall. They were tall and wore lab coats, and between them, they carried an unconscious human female. A blond man held her by the arms, and a dark-haired man carried her legs.

Her body slumped in their grasp, short black hair bouncing with their steps. Every so often, her mouth twitched and eyelids flickered.

“Do you think he can smell the serum inside her?” The blond man asked the other. “Woah, watch her arm.”

The second man shifted the female in his grip. “Maybe. Royal jelly is a primary component of the serum. These V’rakiss are sensitive to Queen pheromones, right?”

“Damn right, especially non-sterile males like him.”

Valeantris remained frozen where he sat, the tip of his mouth jutting through the food slot. As the men passed in front of his enclosure, the full impact of Queen pheromones suffused his senses. His talons tensed and curled against the glass.

An image flashed into his mind — his life, before capture. He was surrounded by other V’rakiss in the primary hive chamber, swarming together and touched on every side by his own kind. Claws and snouts bumped, tails winding around bodies. His mind was alive and humming with the hundreds of other hivelinks, all connected to the central foundation of the Queen.

The warm sensation passed once they dragged the female out of his sight.

His claws relaxed, sliding off the windowpane with a _skrrtch._ Valeantris shook his head, clearing his mind. This was extraordinarily unusual. The human woman the scientists were carrying smelled of Queen, but she appeared to be _homo sapiens_ through and through.

One of the men had spoken of a serum partially made using royal jelly. Perhaps she was another pitiable captive of McKnight Industries.

Rising to two legs again, he backed away from the food slot, tail flicking from side to side. Generally, he had little sympathy for humans. His hive was not the sort that made it a habit to attack and kill settlements, nor did they use humans as a source of sustenance. Of course, they would fight against humans if threatened — but they did not seek out such conflict.

Still, even so, as a soldier of the hive, he had always been wary of large apex predators like humans near hive territory.

Valeantris’ sympathy dwindled even further after this wretched company had captured him.

Enough useless rumination, he thought.

To give himself something to do, he turned to a section of the room whose resin was peeling. He had covered the entire holding room in resin during his imprisonment. What was once a bleach white room was now covered in hard amber-colored resin. The substance turned the edges of the square, shoe-box like enclosure into curves and contours. The resin was uneven and bumpy, and some sections along the top of the walls resembled frozen ocean waves.

It was the only thing he could do to make his cage feel more like home. A way to make himself feel less like an insect stabbed through the thorax and mounted to a pin board, to be studied and turned over by greedy hands.

Dropping to all fours, he crawled toward the peeling section of resin. Valeantris lowered his mouth and flexed his mandibles at the back of his jaw. Nerves tingled and liquid resin flowed to the tips of his mandibles.

For a while, he lost himself in his repairs, meticulously filling the hole in his construction. Drop his head, flex his mandibles, release resin, shape the substance with his hands before it dried. It was rhythmic and mindless, the activity of the youngest worker caste hive member. But there was comfort in it. The act of construction was one of creation, of creating something beautiful and familiar where only sterile white walls had been.

He was about to reach the end of his task when something nudged against his mind. His mandibles pressed tight against the side of his mouth.

It couldn’t be —  
  
But there it was — the telltale tug of a hivelink. It didn’t consciously reach for him but rather naturally drew his mind toward it like a magnet.

The link was drifting, gauzy and fragile as a cobweb in the wind.

There were no other V’rakiss in the facility that he knew of … except for the female human. Perhaps whatever she’d been injected with not only changed her smell but her mind.

Pure curiosity drove him to stretch forth his own hivelink. Valeantris was delicate as he ensnared the unmoored young link. When he latched on, a spark and the thrum of another mind greeted him. He almost trembled in relief. Finally. His mind was no longer blank and empty, it was anchored to another being.

He sent a simple message along the thread just to test it.

_‘Hello?’_

“‘Lo?” There was a scraping, muffled sound. A thump of a body against the wall next to him.

So the scientists had put her in the enclosure beside his. Valeantris’ tendrils twitched upward, trying to sense the electricity of her body. The wall was too thick for his electroreceptors to penetrate.

_‘You need not speak to me out loud. Just reach out to me with your mind. Speak the words into my own head.’_

He arose, placing his hand on the wall as he had with the glass. There was silence for several throbs of his heart.

 _‘ … God, what the hell? Can you really hear this? Do I need to try again?’_ A female voice chimed in his mind, soft as a whisper.

 _‘Yes,’_ he said. _‘I am here.’_

 _‘Who are you? What’s going on?’_ Her voice spiked with panic.

Valeantris attempted to direct a cool pulse of calm to her mind.

 _‘I am Valeantris. This is a facility owned by McKnight Industries — ‘_  
  
She cut him off, _‘I know who owns this place. I mean: What are they doing to us?’_

He hissed to himself. Disruption was disrespectful to someone in his caste, but under the circumstances, he understood. The woman had to be under significant stress and disorientation after being experimented on and rendered unconscious.

 _‘I have been held here for many cycles and subjected to various tests. As for you, I heard the scientists saying you’ve been injected with a serum containing V’rakiss royal jelly.’_ He tilted his head, waiting for an answer.

 _‘You’re a prisoner here too? Shit. I’m sorry. Dr. Spurling said that he wanted this damn stuff to turn me into a V’rakiss … ‘_ her voice trailed off, the connection straining.

Valeantris resisted grabbing onto it. He didn’t want to spook her _or_ snap the connection entirely.

_‘It seems we are to be neighbors, so may I ask your name?’_

_‘Roni Wildcraft,’_ she said tiredly, quietly.

 _‘Roni,’_ he intoned.

 _‘Wildcraft,’_ he purred.

 _‘Wildcraft. An exceptional name,’_ he finished.

 _‘Thanks. I’d take credit, but my mom just stumbled into it,’_ she said, flippantly.

Valeantris clicked in amusement. _‘If we are to be imprisoned together, at least you shall garnish it with humor. I am pleased to meet you.’_

_‘Likewise.’_

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

Roni wasn’t a stranger to being captured. She’d had a few brushes with the law and had been dragged into grungy backrooms after she displeased someone with the quality of her products.

In those situations, there’d always been a way out, whether by sweet-talking someone, fighting back, or breaking her way out.

Given that her telepathic friend in the next room said he’d been there for “many cycles,” it was unlikely this cell was easy to get out of.

She hopped up on the austere white bed pressed against the wall, soiling the white sheets with the dirt on her boots. This bed was nothing like the one in the volunteer dormitory — the mattress didn’t give under her weight much at all. It was like they wanted her uncomfortable on purpose.

Roni surveyed the room. It was so white it practically glowed. The wall behind her and the two walls to the side didn’t have a scratch on their pristine white facade. The wall facing the hallway was clear. Some kind of glass.

 _‘I don’t suppose there’s any weaknesses in these rooms, are there?’_ she asked, directing her thoughts to the alien in the next room. (For that’s what he had to be. Humans didn’t use telepathy like this yet without someone else establishing a link first.)

 _‘No. I have tested the room many times, and I cannot find any weaknesses. Testing the food slot, in particular, will not help you,’_ the voice said. It was rich and resonant, humming and tingly at the back of her skull.

 _‘Hey, you read my mind, fella.’_ She’d been eyeing that spot before he responded.

_‘I cannot read minds, I can only speak into them —’_

Roni huffed. _‘God, take a joke.’_

 _‘I understood it, but I needed to point out the reality of the situation so that you don’t make a mistake about the extent of my capabilities,’_ he replied.

She let the conversation drop for the moment. Focus was necessary, and chatting with a fellow inmate wouldn’t help.

Valeantris said he tested his own cell repeatedly, but that didn’t mean hers was the exact same. She placed her hands on her hips and scanned the enclosure.

Besides the bed, a desk was bolted to the floor in the corner adjacent the bed. A chair was bolted in front of it. It probably didn’t have the same technological interface as her old nightstand. A toilet was against the other blank wall.

Other than that, there was nothing in the room.

She wrinkled her nose, her fingers gradually pressing into her palm.

Roni hopped off the bed, boots smacking the hard floor. She stormed to the glass window and pounded her fist on it. “Hey, assholes? I’m not a zoo animal you get to gawk at!”

She continued to bang on the pane. “Hey! I know you’ve gotta be listening! I don’t see cameras, but there have to be some hidden ones somewhere!”

 _‘Correct, there are cameras. But your protests will do no good. They do not care for our comfort,_ ’ the alien informed her.

 _‘Then I’ll just make things difficult for them.’_ Her hand dropped from the glass, and she glared out at the empty hallway.

* * *

She sat cross-legged in front of the window, hands on her knees, endlessly staring at the dim hall. There were no imperfections in the pane: no scratches, scuffs, or scrapes. But it wasn’t as if she had something she could break the glass with, anyway.

Valeantris tried to catch her attention a few more times by plucking on their mental link, but she was too busy scanning every inch of glass for weakness.

As she did, Roni pondered _what_ Valeantris was. He was courteous, telepathic, probably not human, and a prisoner. The only alien that she knew of that fit the bill was the Leeralyn — a species that closely resembled humans aside from their purple-hued skin, somewhat ridged brows, and the small horns on their foreheads. They were known as a scholarly, distant people who declined speaking aloud, believing that speaking-mind-to-mind was the purest form of communication.

The Leeralyn was one of the first species humans encountered in their space-faring journeys, and thankfully they were generally the friendly sort. They viewed humans as a rough species with much potential. Some Leeralyn even took humans under their tutelage.

But they were quite an advanced species — how could McKnight Industries have gotten their hands on one?

But then, how were they capable of synthesizing a serum that could turn someone into a fucking giant alien bug? What a Kafka-esque horror show, she thought.

During her ruminations, the lights along the hall gleamed. Footsteps shod by sensible shoes echoed down the hall. Dr. Spurling walked into view, hands behind his back, a frown on his old-young face.

Roni sprang to her feet, upper lip drawing back, lower mouth pulling down in the reflection of pure animal hatred.

“Fuck you,” she spat. “Let me out of here.”

Dr. Spurling touched the pads of his soft fingers to the glass pane. “I understand you’re upset. But if you’ll let me explain — “

“None of your explanations could justify _this_.” She held up a shaking hand, the skin around the hard spot still sloughing off. Several dry pieces of skin fluttered to the ground like dead petals.

“You might change your mind if you hear what I have to say. Please, take a seat.” He spread his fingers and gestured to the chair and desk.

“I’m not doing anything you want.” Roni slammed a fist on the glass. The strike reverberating through her bones. She wished the hit had been to his nose.

The pane reflected her snarling face, Roni’s distorted image lengthening her canines to points, completing the savage portrait.

Spurling’s eyebrows scrunched up. “Roni, please … “ his voice was rough. “You need to calm down. If you don’t, then there will be consequences.”

She coughed a laugh and rolled her eyes. “This couldn’t get a whole lot worse. I’ve become a lab rat and am imprisoned in some probably secret base nobody knows about. I’m going to turn into a monster. Show me consequences.”

Spurling’s shoulders slumped, and he seemed to fold in on himself. His eyes flickered away from her, and he fumbled with the tips of his glasses. If Roni didn’t know who he was, she’d think he was just a sad little man who’d heard terrible news.

But she just wanted to bash his face against the glass.

Then, her body was lit alight. The same shock as before jolted through her, pulling her eyelids wide, splaying her fingers, and throwing her head back. She fell to the side. Air rushed from her throat.

“Roni. I’m not the one doing this, but you have to understand … we have procedures we’re all directed to follow.”

Her lips twitched. Roni flexed her vocal cords, but no sounds came out. Lips fluttered like a fish gasping, drowning in the crushing air. Her fingernails scraped against the floor.

“I’ll advise them not to be so shock-happy in the future, but to ensure this won’t keep happening, you need to work with me.”

A small stream of blood trickled from between her lips. Her molars had sliced the inside of her cheek during the shock.

Roni tried to cling to consciousness, but her mind slipped down, trapped in a mire of buzzing pain and a fog of disorientation. Twin tendrils wrapped themselves around her mind, pulling her down, down, into a dark, sticky pit, but not before she heard the words: _‘Wildcraft, I am here. Do not be afraid.’_


	4. Chapter 4

Roni floundered to wakefulness, pushing and struggling back against the blackness that still slapped and dragged at her mind. Fucking Dr. Spurling.

The back of her head pounded like someone had cracked her in the skull with a baseball bat. She rubbed at it with her palm to be sure she hadn’t split her head open when she hit the floor. No wet blood came away on the heel of her hand.

_‘He’s right.’_

Roni flinched at the voice. The connection made her head throb.

 _‘I’m not in the mood for chatting,’_ she told Valeantris.

_‘Understandable. But let me say this — you will get further by allowing Spurling and the others to think that you’ve seen their logic than you will by fighting back against them. You want out, I assume?’_

She rolled onto her side and tried to push herself up. Roni sank back down when black spots started pulsating before her eyes.

 _‘Of course I do. But you haven’t gotten out of here, so why exactly should the compliance tactic work?’_ She snorted.

‘ _You speak true. But I have been spared the harshest treatment the scientists are willing to display by softening my aggression. You will buy yourself time this way.’_ Something scraped and shuffled along the room next to her. It finally settled. She assumed it must be Valeantris. ‘ _You want to fight — I sympathize. But the time for fighting must wait.’_

Roni scrubbed her knuckles against her eyes and exhaled. The sigh made her lungs burn.

_‘What you’re saying makes sense. I can’t plan much of an escape if I’m constantly getting the shock treatment. I suppose I’ll try your advice out.’_

* * *

Dr. Spurling took a tissue scraping from the back of her hand. Roni schooled her mouth into a flat, neutral line. She wanted to sock him in the mouth.

“There we are.” Spurling tipped the scraping into a vial and smiled at her. “I hope that didn’t hurt too much.”

Like he gives a damn about how I feel, she thought.

But she kept her face placid, laying her hands flat in her lap. “It stung, but nothing too noticeable.”

Spurling sat in the chair across from her, picking up his tablet. He tapped something on the screen. “Excellent, I’m glad to hear that. And I’m happy that you decided not to fight back again when I came by this morning. I am honestly sorry about earlier.”

She scanned his face, trying to discern if he was lying. He didn’t glance away, didn’t blink too fast, fidget, pick at his nails, raise an eyebrow or any other physical signs of lying that she’d seen before.

Either Roni hadn’t yet discovered his tell or he was being truthful. Either way, she needed to press forward with her new plan.

“Look, doc, we both know I’m still not a huge fan of this,” she shifted and slouched, pointing at Spurling, “but I’m a practical person. If I’m gonna be stuck in this situation, why don’t we both benefit?”

Spurling leaned in closer, his lips pursed. “What do you mean?”

Aha, he’d taken the bait. She figured he would buy this explanation for her change in attitude — she was a thief, so why wouldn’t he buy her working an angle?

“Well, you and McKnight Industries bribed me into taking the serum on the basis that it would make me stronger. I let you test me, you give me money and a place to stay. After the study was done, you said you’d still keep me nice and set up while you observed me just to make sure I still wasn’t having any adverse reactions. A partnership, right?” Roni nodded at Spurling.

“Yes, that was the cover story, and we gave you what we promised. Things only changed once you began displaying metamorphosis. What are you getting at?”

“Like I said — a partnership. I stop fighting back, you keep me set up, you support me — in whatever form I end up taking. And you don’t just dump me on some moon somewhere once you’re done and I’m a bug or whatever. Just essentially do what we originally agreed to.” She held out her hand to him in a proffered shake.

The doctor squinted at her hand like her “condition” would somehow transfer to him. “You understand I can’t change your accommodations back to what they were? You need to stay in the observation chamber.”

She waved her hand in the air. “Yeah, yeah. You still have to comply with protocol, I get that. I can put up with that shit room if you’re good with this deal.”

Spurling clasped his hand in hers. His skin was cold and dry, almost like a reptile’s.

“Very well. It’s a deal.”


	5. Chapter 5

Life shivered, strained, and then settled into an odd rhythm. On Monday, Spurling performed a routine checkup and then injected her weekly dose of the serum. When that happened, Roni tried not to imagine the invisible chemicals twisting and shaping her DNA into new, distorted symmetries. She could almost feel the burning sludge crawling through her veins.

Tuesdays, she was left alone for her body to process the serum — the facility’s precious little lab rat couldn’t be disturbed. Roni imagined that they viewed her in the same way she saw expensive merchandise: fragile, with the price tag practically stamped all over it.

The majority of the week was then dedicated to putting her through all kinds of scans and checkups.

But then there were Fridays. On Fridays, she was required to perform tests of strength or agility.

This Friday she was required to scale walls with different heights and textures.

The wall she was attempting to climb at that moment was slick, with only a few bumpy handholds jutting from the surface. Sweat slithered down her spine as she clutched onto the small handholds the wall presented her. Her heartbeat pulsated in her throat.

Roni gradually lifted the fingers of her right hand and stretched, reaching for the next handhold above her head. A piece of hair fluttered in front of her eyes. She tossed her head, trying to flip the lock back.

Bad move.

Her fingers slid from the handhold, and the grip of her toes started to slip. Roni’s heart ricocheted in her chest.

The cool surface of the wall skimmed over her stomach as she slid, her nails scrambling for purchase.

One palm slammed down at a lower hand hold before she slipped past it. Clammy, sweat drenched fingers threatened to slide again. They clung fast while her lungs pumped like bellows.

How the hell could she have been so clumsy? She’d been scaling and hopping fences since she was 13, and back then she was gangly as a colt.

The V’rakiss serum couldn’t be blamed. They were known to be skilled climbers. That was the whole point of this particular test.

Roni exhaled a breath between clenched teeth. Just a few more feet, and she’d be to the top of the wall and the researchers would be happy.

Lift the right hand — slowly, carefully this time — place it, one finger at a time, down on a handhold.

She performed the same action until she hauled herself to the top of the wall. A softened black mat sat on the floor beneath her. As she looked down, she felt that ancient pull inside her bones murmuring for her to jump. Her calf muscles tensed.

Jump she did.

Her body crashed into the mat, the impact absorbed by whatever cutting edge material it was made from. The left side of Roni’s body throbbed for a moment, but she was otherwise unscathed.

”Record time!” An auburn haired woman rushed to the edge of the mat. Her fingers tapped rapidly against the screen of a tablet, different bright colors flashing in the reflection of her eyes as she clicked through various icons and applications.

Roni rose, swiping her hands over her pants. “Great. Send me to the next Terran Climbing Championships.”

“I understand this lacks the same significance to you that it does to us. But look — “ She tilted the screen toward Roni. With a flick of her fingers, a hologram grew from the screen and displayed a graph. “Your time is getting closer to V’rakiss workers and soldiers that we’ve put through similar agility and endurance tests.”

Roni’s eyes bounced over the graphs and numbers, but they meant little to her. But she could tell that the blue line that represented her did indeed seem to be catching up to the other lines that hovered above it.

Nails pressed into her palm. She crossed her arms to hide the movement. “So, basically the serum is doing what it’s supposed to?”

The woman nodded. “It seems so, though the outward changes are slower.” She glanced to look at Roni’s hidden hand.

Over the weeks that had passed, more skin had peeled away, leaving behind the hard, black-blue chitin she hated. Each new inch of chitin was another hash mark showing she had one less day of humanity left.

”Fucking fantastic news,” Roni said. Cooperative deal with Spurling or no, she wasn’t going to put on a show of excitement.

The woman’s mouth opened, her pink lips fluttering. Roni noted that she’d find this scientist attractive and desirable if not for the fact that she was part of the company keeping her locked up.

Shoes murmured against the floor as the woman came closer. “I wasn’t onboard with this. I wanted you or anyone else part of this experiment to be informed about what it would do to you,” she said, her voice lowered. “But I was overruled.”

”And yet you’re still working for these shitheads, so it doesn’t look like your conscience weighed on you too much about your choice.” Roni’s eyes narrowed.

The scientist’s fingers pressed hard into the edges of the tablet she held. “You don’t understand. It’s not that easy to go against what they want. You’ve seen what they can do.”

Roni wasn’t in the mood to hear excuses and whining about how oh-so difficult and hard it was to perform unethical and highly illegal human experimentation. Her patience was fraying bit by bit.

”Take me back to my cell, huh? I need to rest.” She tipped her head in the direction of the exit.

”Yes, of course.”

* * *

_‘ … And then she talked about how hard it is to turn me into a bug. And she feels bad about it, really.’_

Roni lay her hands behind her head, staring at the darkening ceiling. The facility enforced natural day and night cycles, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t lie awake talking to her next door neighbor.

 _’I know of the woman of whom you speak. Her name is Dr. Ember Highmore. She is a xenobiologist.’_ Valeantris scraped across the floor and thumped against the wall, like he was trying to get closer to her.

Roni shifted a hand so her fingers wouldn’t brush her chitin.

_’You’ve worked with her before? Is she always apologetic while taking part in illegal experiments?’_

_’I have. She is indeed generally more sympathetic than other scientists you will find here. I believe she wishes to do the right thing but … she fears facing reprisal. Perhaps she also does not want to lose status.’_ Valeantris’ voice didn’t vibrate with disdain, he just described Highmore like she was a vague acquaintance.

Roni fell silent. What if Highmore’s desire to do right eventually superseded her fear or desire to climb the ladder? Roni’s opinion of humanity was generally quite low — even moreso once her imprisonment began. But some humans still wanted to do the right thing. That’s how she got started thieving.

 _’You think Ember could be convinced to help us escape one day?’_ As soon as she shared the proposal, Roni inwardly cringed. It sounded so childish.

Her fear of the foolishness of the idea grew when her question was met by silence. If Valeantris really was a Leeralyn, he was probably thinking right at that moment how amusing and naive humans were. And how truly pathetic the plan was.

_‘ … It is not impossible. I believe you should pursue this endeavor.’_

Roni sat upright, staring at the spot on the wall across the room where Valeantris likely leaned. _‘You don‘t think it’s doomed to fail?’_

_’Not inherently. Dr. Highmore is one of your own species, and she didn’t want this experiment to commence in the first place. She has sympathy and already views you as more of an equal than me.’_

_‘Pursue it,’_ he said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you feel like you've seen this chapter before, that's because I decided to rewrite the end and repost it! I realized I wasn't happy with the end scene and it didn't feel right. So, if you read this chapter before, just read the last scene, as it is very different.

Valeantris snatched the hunk of meat offered to him from the feeding slot and slunk to the corner, his back turned to the glass.

Clutching the meat in his hands, he ripped a strip of flesh from the chunk and snapped it up into his jaw

“I haven’t been to see you lately, have I?” A woman’s voice asked behind the glass.

He merely clacked his jaws together in response and continued ripping into the food. The facility didn’t feed him as often as he needed it. Perhaps they didn’t know that, or maybe they did it to prevent him from being at the height of his strength.

”They’re about to come by and run you through some tests again. I just thought you should know.”

At that, he paused, jaws open mid-bite. Pink meat juice dripped from the sides of his mouth, plopping down onto the resin-coated floor. His head tilted and he peered over his shoulder. The woman visiting was Dr. Ember Highmore. If Roni was to use her as part of an escape plan, he needed to be cordial — or at the least not openly hostile.

The meat was placed beside his crouched legs, and Valeantris stood, turning to face her. Taking several steps toward the glass, he looked down at the woman several feet shorter than himself.

Dr. Highmore craned her neck up to try and look into his eyes but was only greeted by the length of his jaw. “I know you haven’t had many visitors at all. The rest of the staff has pretty much left you alone, so maybe you’ve gotten used to being, well, just an exhibit for the most part. You’re not going to fight back, are you?”

It would be difficult to even give a one-word response to her question. V’rakiss were capable of communicating with other species, but establishing a connection and forming words was difficult — like gradually clawing a hole through a wall, a task which was not impossible, but lacked the ease of the instantaneous link between all V’rakiss. Or with Roni.

 _'… N … o,’_ he said, each sound pulled from his mind and pressed into Dr. Highmore’s. It probably sounded more like a formless grunt than actual language.

The skin beneath her eyes flinched. She likely was not used to feeling an outside presence brush against the neurons of her brain.

Then, a nod. “Good. I know some of the other staff just view you as a lab experiment, but — “ Brown eyes flicked away from him. “I’d rather not see you hurt, that’s all.”

Her left hand ran through her hair and she glanced behind herself. Smears of shadows appeared at the end of the hallway. “Here they come.”

Valeantris tensed, the muscles in his legs stiffening and his tail going rigid as if to prepare for an attack. But he would keep his word. He wouldn’t fight. The shadows became more crisp and clear when their owners appeared — a robot marched out in front, trailed by two male scientists.

The robot stopped and stood in front of the glass with a stun baton in one shiny hand. Valeantris pushed down the burst of a rattling snarl threatening to push its way out of his throat.

Memories of the stun baton crashing against his head and sending a paralyzing jolt of electricity through his body were enough to momentarily override his self-control. The pain always overrode all his senses, scrambling his electroreceptors and sending waves of rage and nausea through his entire body. His back curved, displaying his full size.

”You said you would go without a fight,” Ember said. She was nearest him, two fingers pressed to the clear wall.

She was correct. Fighting would increase strife for himself and Roni.

He forced his tail to lay still along the floor. One muscle at a time, his back lowered.

The scientists glanced at each other and shuffled away to make room for the robot. It was tall — almost Valeantris’ height — and humanoid in shape. But it was not meant to truly mimic a human in appearance, unlike some artificial humans he had seen. Its shape only suggested humanity. No synthetic skin covered its body, no clothes adorned its form, and its head was a flat, smooth plane — unreadable. Its body was as white and unnaturally clean as the rest of the facility, save Valeantris’ resin-covered enclosure.

The robot tapped buttons at the side of the cell. A thin line appeared in the middle of the glass, and the wall slid apart in two sections, forming an entrance large enough for the robot to enter through.

”Stand here and prepare to be restrained for transport,” it said, voice flat and passionless.

Valeantris further drew on his reserves of patience and held his arms in front of the machine. It reached down to a pack fastened about its waist and withdrew a muzzle. He clamped his mouth shut and allowed the device to be strapped to his head and in front of his jaws. No teeth were housed within his maw, but the edges of each jaw were jagged, sharp, and strong. Perfectly able to crush human bone and rip flesh.

Valeantris was a chitinous statue while the robot finished its work. Once it was done, his arms were pinned to his sides by metal, and his tail was restrained by a chain connected to a shackle around one foot.

It was demeaning. But he would bear it.   


* * *

Strangely, they put him through a battery of tests that he had already completed before — climbing, speed, agility, strength, intelligence.

Why they deigned to test his intelligence when they treated him as a brutish beast was beyond him.

Still, he did as they asked, not wanting to feel the crack of the stun baton against his temple.

After what he believed to be several hours, Valeantris was shepherded into a darkened room. No windows or artificial lights provided the hint of a glow — not even a small crack created by an imperfection. His world was plummeted into what seemed like an inky black ocean. V’rakiss sight was adequate, but under such conditions, nothing could be perceived. He would have to rely on electroreceptors in his tendrils.

”A series of barriers have been placed throughout the room. In one area, a living being has been secured. You are tasked with finding it,” said a voice. It had the artificial quality of speech filtered through an electronic speaker.

Valeantris’ tail twitched. The task was simple enough. He raised his tendrils high in the air, flicking them back and forth. When he turned his head to the left, the humming tingle of a living being’s muscle contractions grew stronger.

He crouched and crawled to the left, tendrils waving in the air to sense if he was about to brush against an obstacle. None showed itself yet. Oddly, there were no scents wafting through the air. His sense of smell was practically blinded. Even the faint sharpness of sanitizing chemicals should have been present.

Valeantris pushed the observation aside and continued to move left, at an angle, until the tip of his right tendril grazed a hard object. The tingling grew weaker. He was turning in the wrong direction.

He pivoted, head swinging inch by inch to the right. The electricity grew stronger there. A tendril twitched. No obstacle.

Gradually, he crept claw over claw as slowly as possible, paying close attention to any change in intensity of electric impulses, changing course whenever he brushed against a hard obstacle. Talons scratched over the hard surface, and every so often his fingers and toes tensed, hoping for something to grip onto. The floor was almost slick as ice.

His tendrils pricked up straight, practically crackling with electricity once he reached the living being. Nails skittered back and forth in the darkness — the creature seeking an escape. Valeantris reached out, and his palm met glass, preventing him from touching the organism.

Light flooded the room.

He jerked back, emitting a slow hiss as he snapped his eyes shut. Throbbing lights pulsated beneath his eyelids. It was unsurprising that the scientists chose to temporarily blind him.

Cracking one eyelid open, he glanced at the cage in front of him. Within it was a small, furry creature with six limbs and large eyes meant for a nocturnal existence. It was huddled toward the back of the cage, shivering, with its gaze locked on him.

”Excellent,” said the voice from the unseen speakers. “Your participation in this experiment was satisfactory. You will be escorted back to your cell.”

* * *

Valeantris slumped in the corner of his enclosure. Now he always attempted to not let the indignity of the experiments get to him. At the beginning, he fought, clawed, and shrieked when the scientists tried to force him into tests. A V’rakiss hive soldier should not be made to follow the directives and orders of anyone but their Queen.

However, as he’d told Roni, each fight was met by equal pain and punishment. But he couldn’t fully stop the humiliation that twisted within his intestines after being told to allow himself to be shackled and restrained, then following the order like an obedient beast.

He stretched out along the floor, his head resting along his crossed forelimbs. If shattered pride was the only thing damaged today, that was a victory, he thought.

_‘Rough time?’_

Valeantris’ head raised a fraction of an inch. _‘It was not a pleasant day. I was subjected to tests, some similar to the ones you’ve gone through.’_

 _'Damn,’_ Roni said, the sigh almost tangible even in her mental voice. _‘They make you climb a wall?’_  
  
 _‘Among other tests, yes.’_ His eyes drifted shut. He could rest and converse at the same time. _‘The last one was new, however. They were testing my electroreception abilities.’_

Silence for a moment. _‘Electro-what?’_

 _‘Electroreception. V’rakiss have tendrils, within which are housed electroreceptors that allow us to sense the electrical impulses of another living thing.’_ Tendrils lifted, hoping he could sense Roni’s electricity, something to remind him that she was truly a living being and not just a voice he spoke to.

Bare feet slapped, growing dimmer as her footsteps backed away from the wall that their cells shared. Valeantris’ snout followed the movement. He hadn’t even known she was leaning so near, close enough to touch if there was no barrier. Why had she moved?  


 _‘You’re … V’rakiss?’_ Her voice was strained, the words pulled from her with difficulty.

His spine tensed. _‘I am. You didn’t know?’_

 _‘Well, you didn’t fucking tell me, did you?’_ She spat.

Instinctively, his tailed whipped at her sharp tone. He pushed it down. It was likely she’d heard grim stories about his species.

 _‘I thought you already somehow knew. I didn’t set out to intentionally deceive you. What is the reason for your displeasure?’_ Pushing himself up, he sat and stared at the wall. She wan’t going to cut off contact, was she? She couldn’t leave him alone with a void in his mind again. Ripping the connection from him would be more painful than never having it in the first place. He could almost imagine the link oozing and bleeding if she severed it.

 _‘Maybe you didn’t intentionally do it, but you should’ve said something. You didn’t think that it might be relevant when I told you that this company wants to make me into the same thing you are?’_ Her tone felt like it was driving into his brain, each word a knife’s cut.

Valeantris jerked to his feet and paced, claws flexing. He circled the perimeter of his cell. _‘Well, you know now. Does it change our tentative alliance?’_

_‘Hell yeah, it does.’_

He flinched. His sternum rose and fell quickly. This was not the build of blazing rage, he thought. It was the thorns of fear pricking at his heart.

 _‘How can I trust you with my escape if you withhold important information?’_ Roni asked. _‘And to say nothing of what I’ve heard about what V’rakiss do to human colonies.’_

Valeantris inhaled. The breath burned his nasal cavity. ‘ _And what have you heard?’_

 _‘You’ll outright kill us or worse — paralyze humans and take them to the egg chambers to be eaten alive by larval young after they hatch,’_ she said, voice dripping with venom.

 _‘Not all of us do such things. Yes, we must bring live prey for our young to consume, but my hive never used humans. We only used prey animals native to our planet.’_ He knew keenly that he was omitting the fact that he and other soldiers had killed humans that had outright threatened their hive.

_‘How can I trust that? How can I believe that you’re not just saying that so I’ll break out with you?’_

_‘I — '_  
  
And like that, the tenuous line of connection between them snapped.

He felt the moment the void left within him began to bleed.

Valeantris’ shriek echoed off the resin-coated walls.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: This chapter includes more horror elements and descriptions of gore than previous chapters.

That afternoon, Roni tried to block out the cries coming from the cell beside her. The sounds were discordant, alternating between bursting shrieks and rising and falling screams. It sounded like the call of some wounded beast injured by a hunter.

Mercifully, the cacophony stopped after several minutes, but she sat hunched on her bed, twitching at each clack and scrape emanating from the other room. Now that she knew what lay beyond the wall, she looked at the blank space with trepidation instead of hopeful curiosity. Those sounds, too, eventually stopped.

But even in the silence, Roni couldn’t relax. She kept raising her hand and staring at the back of it, tilting it right and left, grimly transfixed by its glimmering sheen. It reminded her of the greasy black of an oil slick and just as poisonous.

So, she was on her own now. While the revelation about Valeantris’ identity was a shock, the fact she had to go back to relying on her own wits wasn’t. That was practically the damn status quo. Had been since she’d left her mother.

Roni clenched her hand into a fist. Not everything was thrown into disarray. She’d continue to play into Dr. Spurling’s belief that she was cooperating while she gradually earned Dr. Highmore’s trust. Sure, she’d lost one ally, but she had a potential new one on the line. And at least that one happened not to be a huge, carnivorous alien.

Her eyes flickered closed once the lights automatically shut off. She was still getting out of here.

* * *

Roni continued to comply with whatever tests Spurling wanted her to do, and she’d try to find excuses to catch up with Ember Highmore.

One day after having a body scan, she’d spotted Ember in the back watching the thin screens to monitor the results. Once the scan was complete, she asked Ember a barrage of questions. Roni didn’t particularly retain most of the answers, many of which involved scientific jargon that made her eyes glaze over. But the important thing was making Ember feel like Roni had an interest in her and a trust in her expertise.

After another climbing session, Roni asked to see her charts to confirm whether her speed was increasing.

Little by little, Roni could see Ember getting closer to truly biting the bait and snagging the metaphorical hook in the side of her mouth. Roni had always been more of a thief than a con-artist, but now she was understanding the intoxication some felt when they fell into the con business. It truly was a fine art.

Ember was becoming the most common person sent to escort her from the cell. One day, she led Roni down a series of halls and toward a room she’d never seen before.

“This is … well, sort of a sauna, I guess. Everyone on the project figured humidity and water could help you, er — shed more easily.” Her gaze dropped to Roni’s hand. The chitin had spread to almost the entire back of her hand and was beginning to creep up her fingers.

Roni snorted. “Spa day, huh? Hell of a lot better than injection day, I’ll tell you that much.”

Ember shrugged. Her lab coat fit perfectly over her shoulders, not a wrinkle in the fabric in sight. “I was the one that initially proposed it. It seemed beneficial, and besides, I thought you may enjoy it. A happy experiment participant makes things easier for everyone.”

“You know what a girl likes.” Roni patted her on her perfectly ironed sleeve. Inwardly, she was pleased with the news. Ember was trying to give her small comforts. That meant she was beginning to feel more concern over Roni’s welfare and emotions.

Ember crossed her arms behind her back. “I’ll stay outside the door while you’re in the sauna. When time’s about up, I’ll knock.”

Roni nodded at her and opened the door. The entrance was covered from floor to ceiling with white tile that glowed from within. Two hooks were affixed to the wall near the door that she assumed to lead to the sauna. Roni sloughed off her clothing and made her way into the next room.

Immediately a wall of heat and moisture blanketed her naked skin. The walls and floor were outfitted with the same glowing tile. If she weren’t being held prisoner, she’d find the glow soothing, but as it was, she wasn’t in a state of mind to appreciate the effect.

Roni sat down on the bench and raised her transforming hand. She had quickly learned that the sight of dull skin meant she would soon shed and find chitin beneath. At the base of her thumb and index finger, she spotted a curve of dull, whitish skin. She flipped her hand over to look at the other side. The ring of odd skin wrapped around the other side of her fingers as well.

Shit. The metamorphosis was spreading. So much for trying to enjoy the sauna. She exhaled and lowered her hand into her lap. There had to be some way to reverse the process. If a serum started the transformation, perhaps someone could create a serum that would cure her.

Lately, she’d started wondering what would happen if the transformation progressed further. What sort of pain would she feel when she started growing a tail? Would it be like feeling her spine yanked and extended by an invisible hand? Would her muscles and bones ache each day?

And what of her face? Would her hair fall out in clumps each morning, and would her visage grotesquely protrude and distort gradually? She could imagine looking in a mirror and seeing her skin stretching over a snout, maybe even bleeding as the bone grew too fast for the skin to catch up. Her guts twisted at the thought.

The best outcome Roni could imagine was developing the ability to cocoon herself during the worst stages of metamorphosis if there was no cure. Or maybe McKnight Industries would find some grain of pity in its heart and put her into a coma rather than make her consciously live in agony each day.

She dragged her fingers through her hair when a knock came on the outer door. “Yeah, fine. Just give me a second!” she shouted.

Roni hauled herself off the bench, her footsteps heavy as if her dark thoughts had dropped from her mind and into her limbs, slowing down her very movements. She shoved the door open and exited into the entry room.

Snatching her clothes from the hooks, she dared not to take her time redressing despite her sluggish mood. If those shock happy bastards were still monitoring her somehow, no doubt they’d punish her for taking too long in the sauna.

She left the sauna to face Ember. She pushed damp hair away from her eyes. “Time to go back to my cell?”

“Actually, Dr. Spurling notified me that he wants to talk to you. He says it’s important.” Ember’s eyes flicked over her face, eyebrows bunching up for a moment. Concern for her wellbeing?

" … Alright,” Roni said, eyes narrowing. “Lead the way, I guess.”

The two women were silent as Ember lead her through the maze of hallways. Roni imagined herself as an ignorant little lab rat, navigating the maze just as the scientists wanted her to, but she didn’t know whether a reward or punishment would be at the center.

Ember stopped outside an office door and rapped her fingers against the doorway. “Ms. Wildcraft is here to see you, Dr. Spurling.”

“Ah!” Spurling’s enthusiastic voice floated out of the room. “Send her in. I’ve something to show her.”

Ember turned to Roni again, her eyebrows scrunching up once more. She tilted her head toward the room. Roni shrugged and scrunched her own forehead in silent response to whatever message Ember was sending.

She headed into the room. It was early 21st-century chic — that was to say: a wooden desk in the center of the room, a leather couch against one wall, and a sensible chair on each side of the desk. A painting of a nondescript beach on the back wall and a potted office plant in the corner completed the look. The room reminded her of the office of every boss she’d ever seen in old movie streams.

Roni slouched into the chair and raised her gaze to Spurling. “Dr. Highmore said you wanted to see me?”

“Indeed.” He tapped a small bar that sat on his table and a projected screen sprang up from it. “I believe it would be best for me to finally tell you the purpose of this experiment you are part of.”

Her back stiffened. Why was he suddenly being so open with her now? She eyed him, trying to read intent from his face, but if his face were a book, it would have been written in an entirely inscrutable language.

“Before I get into that, however, we must start before the inception of this project.” Spurling pressed his finger against the end of the silver bar on the table and a projected keyboard spread onto the surface of the desk. With a tap against a “key,” the face of a young woman appeared.

It seemed to be a candid shot. The woman was caught between movements, in that instant before she was aware of the camera. Her chin tipped up toward the sky, a wide smile pulling up the edges of her mouth. The sun shimmered within the depths of her eyes and caressed the burnished locks that flowed down over her shoulders. Something seemed familiar about the woman the longer Roni gazed at the photograph — something about the thin lines fanning out from the corner of the woman’s eyes.

“That’s Adonia. My daughter,” Spurling said, a tremble in his voice on the last syllable. Roni saw it then when she glanced back at the Doctor: the same smile lines.

" … Go on,” she said. Roni had no sharp retorts tripping off the end of her tongue meant to needle at her target. A weight had begun to press its palm down onto the room.

“She wanted to be a teacher,” Spurling continued. “Ever since she was a young girl. Adonia loved learning and wanted to teach others everything. Perhaps you are aware that new human colonies will put out ads for positions that are always needed in a new settlement?”

Roni nodded, her eyes drifting back to Adonia’s image. Something about the occasional tremor in Spurling’s tone made her uncomfortable.

“Well, at 23 she saw an advertisement for teachers at a new colony. Zenith’s Point, they called it. At any rate, she’d recently finished a degree in education and immediately applied and was immediately accepted. She was so excited. I took that photo the day before she left to Zenith’s Point.”

The weight of the conversation was pressing down even harder on them. Spurling didn’t speak of Adonia in the present tense at all. There was no possibility the story he recounted would end happily.

“The five months she was there were some of the happiest of her life. Every time she had a video call with me, she had the biggest smile on her face.” A smile twitched on Spurling’s own mouth.

“But then during the sixth month, I got news that Zenith’s Point had lost all communication with surrounding planets. When Interplanetary Coalition investigators arrived to the colony, they found some humans hiding out. But they also found a formerly hibernating V’rakiss hive.” Spurling inhaled, his breath rattling in his throat. He raised a trembling hand to remove his glasses.

“After a lot of trouble, the investigators entered the hive and found where the rest of the colony had gone. They were either killed or paralyzed and taken to the egg chambers.”

Roni’s stomach went cold. Her fingertips tingled.

“My daughter — " His voice broke, and a sob tried to force its way through his mouth. Spurling pressed a fist to his eyes and cleared his throat, chasing the cry away. “She was there in the egg chamber. The larva of those bastards had eaten her alive.”

Spurling tapped another finger against the keyboard, and the photograph of Adonia flicked to a dim room that looked like a cave made from amber. And just like amber, once living beings were trapped within it — most protruding. All were human. Some had been affixed to the wall by the amber resin, others lay half slumped on the floor.

The limbs of the dead cast long, spindly shadows, their fingers stretching out along the walls for the help that had come too late.

A few corpses were almost skeletons, with only stringy scraps of browning flesh clinging to bone marred by striations that may have been teeth marks.

Yet other bodies were still primarily intact, but several had pieces missing and gnawed away. One man was missing an entire jaw.

Roni jerked away, her eyes staring at the peaceful, boring beach on the back wall. She wanted to shrink and crawl into the depths of that painting, to escape the photograph of mutilated and half-eaten carcasses, to flee the entire facility holding her prisoner.

“This is why I’m doing this, Ms. Wildcraft. For her. For Adonia, and for everyone else killed. V’rakiss are on so many planets. We don’t know why, but they are. And they often devastate human populations.

“We’ve tried so many solutions to fight of V’rakiss hives — guns, fire, explosions, robots, sending in men to fight them — but they breed so quickly, they’re so aggressive and adaptable. And so many come out of hibernation on planets we didn’t expect.”

His soft, unnaturally strangely hand touched her chitin. With a hiss, she snatched her hand away.

A hiss? What the hell was that? She took a slow, steadying breath. “Spurling, look, I’m sorry about your daughter. I honestly am. That’s a fucking horrible way for anyone to die. But how does changing mean into the thing you hate fix any of this?”

Dr. Spurling leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across his chest. “The main thing we’ve found that effectively combats V’rakiss is others of their own kind — rival hives. We’ve captured some workers and soldiers, tried to train them to fight other hives, but it doesn’t work. We decided that the best way to deal with this issue is to create our own V’rakiss from humans. That way, they are more controllable _and_ can infiltrate hives.”

Roni pressed herself back into her own chair. “You want me to fight them? Aren’t they at least several feet taller than me?”

“Don’t worry, Ms. Wildcraft. We will train you. And you won’t have to fight many, at least not right now. Just one.” He pressed his lips together in a thin smile.

“We currently house one V’rakiss at this facility. He is from the soldier caste. He will be your eventual opponent.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Damn, you were a thief? How did you survive with such bad skills? Try again.” Zara, her trainer, crossed her arms over her chest, the edge of her lip twisting up.

“Fuck you,” Roni snapped, spitting a spot of blood onto the ground. “I wasn’t constantly getting into brawls. Thieving and smuggling are about being sly and avoiding confrontation.”

Zara shuffled away from where Roni had landed on the ground, not making any move to help her up. Inwardly, she was aware of her inadequacy so far in fighting. (But she wasn’t about to show weakness before anyone employed by McKnight industries.) How could she, a soft-bodied small human, be expected to stand any kind of chance against a carnivorous alien?

Especially not an alien that was likely nursing a grudge against her cutting him off.

“Well, your background in subtlety isn’t going to make any kind of a difference with a V’rakiss. They don’t respond to subtlety. Do we need to go over their natural defenses again?” Zara was already walking to where her tablet rested on a nearby bench.

Roni stood and straightened, rolling her shoulders back. “No, I’m pretty sure I’m good.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you’re not. Otherwise, you’d be fighting back more fiercely.”

Zara stood in front of Roni and pressed a finger to the tablet’s screen, then pointed it away from both of them. Out of the tablet, a lifesize hologram of a V’rakiss rose. The first time Zara showed her the projection, Roni learned that this was a member of the soldier caste.

It towered above them both at seven and a half feet tall. A row of spikes adorned its head, as well as the back of its arms and legs. The hologram shifted its weight like a living thing, throat pulsing with breath. Long, sharp fingers twitched and flexed, waiting for something to plunge into. A long tail swayed behind it, tipped by a venomous blade capable of stabbing or paralyzing a grown human.

For a moment, its twitching tendrils transfixed Roni. Its head raised, cocking back and forth like a bird. Valeantris had spoken of the tendrils. Somehow, they allowed his species to sense electric pulses in the muscles of living things.

“Yeah, get a good look. Because the real thing is much less friendly than this guy,” Zara said.

She tapped the tablet again. The hologram zoomed in to the V’rakiss’ elbows. “As you may have noticed, these things are covered in chitin. It’s difficult to pierce. But around the joints, like their elbows, there are soft spots. If you wound one of those spots, then you’ll slow them down. Aiming for a leg joint is better than an elbow.”

Zara waved her hand over the tablet and the hologram zipped up to the quivering tendrils of the V’rakiss. “These are sensitive too. Harder to injure, of course. But if you’ve got a stun baton, striking these bugs with one briefly overloads their system. ‘Course, I wouldn’t count on you getting a stun baton in later fights. Might let you have one in the first one, though.”

“No offense, but no matter how good of a trainer you are, how am I supposed to stand any chance against a V’rakiss with nothing but my own hands. No armor or anything? The dumbass scientists are just going to let their valuable project be killed?” Roni crossed her arms.

“You’re gonna be getting armor.” Zara switched the tablet off and returned it to the bench. “I’ve actually got some fancy accouterments here.”

She raised an eyebrow and opened up a black sack that sat next the tablet. One by one, she removed two items that looked like arm guards and two smaller objects that could have been gloves. Zara lifted an arm guard. It was black and had spikes running down the length of it, similar to those on the arms of the V’rakiss.

“This is a specially made bracer. It will protect your skin and mimics the defensive spikes of a soldier caste V’rakiss. Since you’ll eventually develop them, Spurling thought you should have imitation ones for now.” Zara tossed her both bracers.

Roni snatched them from the air, managing not to grab them spike-side first.

“Not bad reflexes. Keep that up and there might be hope for you yet,” Zara said, chuckling.

She held up the gloves, which were tipped with curving claws on each finger. “Protection for your hands and the claws imitate real V’rakiss talons. Same principle as the bracers.”

Instead of tossing the false claws, she approached Roni and simply handed them to her. Perhaps they were more expensive to make than the bracers and Zara didn’t want to risk breaking them.

Roni fastened the bracers to her forearms with the straps affixed to the back of the guards. The gloves slipped on over her hands. She extended her hands, flicking and twitching her fingers. Although they were black like her own chitin, the surface of the gloves seemed to shimmer with a hint of iridescence.

For a moment, she could imagine this as a virtual reality experience, and these were the hands of the game’s character she was looking down at. Roni wasn’t an avid user of virtual reality, but she’d dabbled here and there.

It was more alluring to imagine this as an experience she could step in and out of at will than accepting she might have to look at hands like that for the rest of her life.

“Enough admiring the craftsmanship, let’s get back to business,” Zara drawled. “We’ll leave dodging and blocking behind for now and focus on how to fight a larger opponent.”

The trainer was nowhere near as tall as a V’rakiss soldier, but she was still a broad and strong woman. Zara’s tank top displayed her arms that were defined and toned by what must have been years of careful exercise and regimen. Muscle shifted under her skin with each gesture.

“You’re a smaller girl — obviously. But you can use that to your advantage.” She gestured a hand up and down Roni’s body.

“How am I gonna do that?” Roni asked, tone even.

“The main things to remember are that you gotta maintain distance and keep moving. V’rakiss are big and agile, sure, but you’ve still got smaller size on your side, plus I assume you got some experience in speed?” Zara raised an eyebrow.

“Of course. A slow thief is a dead or jailed thief.”

Zara snapped her fingers and pointed at Roni. “Exactly. Now, as I said, aiming at the leg joints is a good defensive move against V’rakiss. Let’s try that.”

Without any other warning, Zara squared her shoulders and made her approach, stalking toward Roni. Thief’s instincts told her to run. Roni forced her feet to stay planted against the floor.

Use speed and size against her opponent? That was all? Zara couldn’t have given her any other instructions?

Enough hesitation.

Roni danced to the side, away from Zara. She made a move to strike at Zara’s knee with her foot. The other woman surged forward and hooked her foot around the back of Roni’s calf, sending her sprawling onto her back.

Roni hissed between her clenched teeth, rubbing the back of her head. Red hot vibrations of pain pulsated through her back.

Zara stood above Roni with crossed arms and shook her head. “Damn, c’mon Wildcraft. I know you get do better. You can’t hesitate like that, and you need to stay out of range. Form was off too. You need to slide on your feet. Don’t cross them.”

Roni pushed her hands against the ground, fingers damp with sweat. She forced herself to sit up. “Fine. Then let’s try again.”

With a shrug and few droplets of sweat in sight, Zara backed up and waited for Roni to stand.

Roni was certain not to cross her feet and kicked at Zara’s knee. Still, Zara moved too fast. She whipped forward, fist aiming for Roni’s jaw. Roni jerked to the side, and Zara’s fist glanced off the side of her face.

She still rubbed her cheek, nose wrinkling.

Zara’s eyes narrowed. “Again.”

* * *

Roni was practically crawling beside Ember as they traveled back to her cell. The training room was several levels above the containment cells. Each step sent an ache through her.

Ember’s gaze was studiously trained on Roni. “Zara can’t wring you out this much. We need to keep you in good shape.”

“Yeah, don’t want your expensive experiment to die on you, huh?” Roni’s patience was too frayed to maintain any semblance of politeness.

“It’s not like — Roni,” she exhaled, “look, maybe I can try to pull a few strings and make sure she goes a little easier on you.”

“I would really appreciate that if you could. And, say, do you mind me asking you something? About the V’rakiss, I mean.” If she couldn’t learn information straight from the source, her next best bet was a xenobiologist.

" … Okay. What do you want to know?”

“What are their typical fighting techniques?” Roni stopped walking. “Or more precisely, what are the fighting habits of the soldier V’rakiss housed next to me?”

Ember’s footsteps echoed off the empty hallway. She took several more paces before she stopped, staring at Roni. A muscle in her jaw twitched. Did she hesitate because she didn’t want to get in trouble if she helped? Whether she answered would prove if her trust was building.

She shuffled closer to Roni. “When soldier V’rakiss fight, the method is usually swarming and overwhelming the enemy. But when one of them is on their own, they are ambush predators.

“A lone V’rakiss will hide and silently stalk prey before attacking them. They will try to paralyze prey first and then kill it. If they can’t, they will go for the most vulnerable parts of the body, like the belly or throat. If wounding those areas doesn’t work, and they get you on the ground, they will clamp your throat in their jaws until they crush your windpipe.”

Roni’s fingers twitched and clenched. “See, that’s useful, but surely not all V’rakiss fight the exact same way.”

It was a risk to prod further at Ember, but she needed _something_ to help her gain an upperhand.

“These days, the soldier in the cell beside yours doesn’t try to fight back too much. But I’m sure Spurling will have someone provoke him. In that case, you’ll need to be prepared for him to try and go for the chest with his tail blade.”

Roni resumed walking, stewing over everything Ember told her. The chest wasn’t as vulnerable as the belly, but maybe Valeantris preferred going the direct route for his kills — stab straight into the heart.

If he killed her, at least he’d be quick about it.

As she entered her cell, she headed for her bed.

Was he really so vicious as to kill a former ally? He was obviously intelligent. He had to know there wasn’t much chance of escaping if he killed her.

Shit, why was she thinking about that at all?  
  
She’d already decided to take him out of the escape equation. Besides, she saw what V’rakiss were capable of. They were born bathed in blood, slowly chewing off parts of their still-living prey.

Even so, sometimes it was difficult to square his intelligence and sound advice with the feral nature inherent in his species.

Roni sank down onto her back on the bed.

The familiar scrape, scrape, thump of Valeantris’ movements sounded from next door.

In that moment, she imagined the tip of his bladed tail dragging the floor.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the endnotes for one serious thing and two fun things! :)

Valeantris was mired in a stupor. It was shameful. He was meant to be strong — the backbone of the hive, capable of caring for his own survival as well as his hivemates and Queen.

Oh, but had he not failed in that endeavor already?  
  
Were he as strong as he once believed himself to be, he would not be wasting away, locked in a box underground, deprived of sun and touch.

His Queen had trusted him to become a secondary breeding member of the hive. Such an honor was not bestowed upon most hive members. Had he been truly worthy, he would have kept his wits about him when leaving the hive in search of a mate.

Instead, he had been apprehended by humans — netted and tied, repeatedly beaten with a stun baton until he was merely a twitching and shivering mass of limbs.

Valeantris’ present numbness had taken him once before, after capture. After the rage burned down to a constant smolder within his belly, ready to flare whenever his captors appeared once more, he lapsed into a shock.

V’rakiss were not meant to be parted from their hives, to have their hivelinks snapped. The severing of hundreds of mental links at once was as if someone had sliced hundreds of his nerves open. How could he have avoided going into shock?  
  
This time, it was only one link. But he had been hopeful of that single link and clung to it, nourished it, and tended to it in its soil.

But the blistering rays of Roni’s rage had destroyed it.

Valeantris tried to find it within himself to disdain her, but he could not. At least, not now. In the hours and several days following the severing of their link, the rage had kindling to ignite once more.

Of course she had turned from him when she found out what she was — she was human. Were they not all soft, cowardly, and conniving? No other humans had treated him with kindness.

Perhaps Ember had come the closest of all the humans he’d known to treating him with decency. But even she had an ulterior motive. She, too, was complicit in his captivity.

But soon he’d come to his senses. Valeantris was not a young and freshly formed soldier, brash and quick to anger. He was calculated, reasonable.

One did rash things when being held captive, and Roni was only in the early stages of it. And she had only ever known the terrible stories humans whispered behind cupped hands about his kind. Besides, she was being transformed into another organism against her will. How could somebody react rationally to that?

His fingers flexed and twitched at the sudden thunk of the feeding slot. Meat slapped to the floor. Even the hunger twisting its way through his intestines did not stir him for the moment.

His eyelids slid closed, and he curled in on himself, tail wrapping around his legs. His tail blade scraped against the chitin covering his shins.

Valeantris imagined himself in a protective cocoon once more — that phase of life between larva and adult — that phase when he was in flux, when he knew nothing but the warmth of cocoon walls enclosing his soft and fragile body.

But he could not regress. Captivity was his only foreseeable future.

V’rakiss could live for many decades if they did not die in defense of the hive. Was he to become a relic, passed from one soft human palm to another as McKnight Industries’ staff changed through the years?  
  
One pastime of his within the hive had been learning and memorizing the myths of his kind. Those stories had kept him company thus far, but there were only so many tales of his species that he could regale himself with.

The legend of the brave soldier Thracce who heroically died serving his Queen could only be remembered so many times before that, too, grew mind-numbing.

Perhaps he would succumb to madness before that occurred. To become a mindless beast would perhaps be a blessing.

And, like a beast of the wood, hunger eventually won over his brooding ruminations. An unseen cord tugged at him from the center of his stomach toward the hunk of meat near the feeding slot.

Valeantris unfolded himself and crawled towards the food. A smear of pink juice coated the edges of the slot where the meat had slid through. Once he reached the meal, he slouched over it, still on all fours. He didn’t bother picking it up with his hands.

No, he merely thrust his snout into the meat, crushing the flesh. He flung his head back as he ripped a piece from the meal.

Blood spattered against the wall, crimson flecks dotting amber resin.

He sat there for a moment, hunched and clamping a piece of rent, bloody flesh within the confines of his jaws. Valeantris’ chest expanded and contracted with each breath.

For a moment, he saw himself from the outside — a large, spindly beast consuming raw flesh with abandon, whose body had been designed to kill and destroy.

His claws could slash open the underbelly of a human with little effort. The blade of his tail could puncture the heart effortlessly, collapsing the fragile little organ in seconds. The vice of his jaws could clamp down and swiftly crush the windpipe of prey.

Then, he understood, if only briefly, why Roni feared him.

He dropped the meat and curled in on himself again, a low, keening noise emanating from his throat.

* * *

Roni’s foot slammed down on Zara’s knee joint. She darted back, taking care not to slip on the sweat coating her bare feet.  
  
Zara stumbled back on the mat, one hand gripping her knee. “Fuck,” she gasped out, digging her fingers into her kneecap.

A grin curled at the edges of Roni’s mouth. Finally, she was the one to land a blow strong enough to make her opponent swear. She planted her hands on her hips, basking in the glow of Zara’s momentary defeat.

“Good job,” Zara admitted, straightening. She still favored the other unbruised leg. “But you know we’re hardly done, right?”  
  
Roni’s upper lip twitched. “Wouldn’t expect any different from a McKnight Industries employee.”

Zara’s eyes narrowed, and she stalked toward Roni, hardly a limp in her gait. Her walk reminded Roni of a hunting jungle cat.

“I put up with your attitude because I know you’re going through hell. But don’t imply I’m like the other people here.” She jabbed a finger in Roni’s face, close enough to gouge an eye.  
  
Roni tilted her head in the opposite direction, but didn’t back up or otherwise show weakness. “If I knew that would get under your skin, I should’ve used that jab at your job before. Don’t pretend to feel sorry for me.”  
  
Zara lowered her finger. “I’m only gonna tell you this once, but I figure we need to be honest here if we’re going to keep beating the shit out of each other: I don’t work for McKnight Industries because I have much of a choice.”  
  
She stepped away from Roni and turned her back. She crossed her arms, fingers rubbing at her biceps. The energy in the room changed from an aggressive electricity that Roni could almost taste to something oppressive, like a gathering storm.

“My sister is sick. Thrullen plague.”   
  
Roni stiffened. The disease was what she initially thought she had before Spurling revealed his true plan.

“I heard rumors McKnight Industries was doing research into curing it, or at least slowing it down. I got in contact with a middleman and was told that if I worked as a trainer for McKnight employees who would go on missions, I’d be given money and doses of experimental drugs to give to my sister.”  
  
Zara’s fingers pressed so hard into her biceps that the skin under her grip turned white. Her shoulders were a stiff, solid line.  
  
“Didn’t know they’d have me doing stuff like this. I figure you got a similar story.” Zara glanced at Roni from over her shoulder.   
  
Roni swallowed hard. Previously, she hadn’t seen Zara as any sort of ally. She still didn’t seem as viable a candidate as Ember with assisting in her desire to escape. Even so, she needed all the tenuous allies and connections she could get.   


Opening up a little in return could benefit herself.

She just hoped that Zara didn’t take advantage of the wound she was about to open and dig into it further.

“I had most of my credits taken on a job gone south and nowhere to go when McKnight Industries found me. Money and a free place to stay in exchange for taking some harmless serum didn’t sound so bad.” Roni shrugged. “And — “

She inhaled, gathering strength from within herself. “I get the whole thing about sacrificing for family. My mom was barely getting by when I was 13. That’s why I started thieving.”

Zara pivoted on her heel to face Roni. She frowned, and something like sympathy glimmered in the depths of her eyes. But that moment soon passed. Like a cloud passing over the sun, Zara’s expression was schooled into one of neutrality.

“Glad we have all that out in the open. Let’s get back to training.”

* * *

The bed in Roni’s cell wasn’t comfortable, but at the moment its mattress felt like sinking into a luxurious hotel bed, and the scratchy blanket could have been a silk sheet.

Zara had treated her less roughly after Ember had a chat with her, but Roni’s body was still dotted with blotchy bruises that ranged from plum purple to yellow-black. She felt as if her skin looked like it was rotting as if were spoiled fruit.

Despite having some understanding of Zara’s own plight, she still didn’t have many charitable things to say about the trainer.

And even Ember — progress with gaining her trust was still moving, but not at the pace she wanted it to.

The chitin was crawling further up each of her fingers. She dreaded waking up one morning and finding her fingertips bleeding from claws trying to work their way through her skin.

God, did she even truly have a plan for escaping, aside from gaining Ember’s help somehow? What if Ember didn’t have any connections that could help her get out? Then she was back to square one _again._  
  
Roni jumped when something large thumped against the opposite wall.  
  
Valeantris.  
  
She had been hearing less of his scuffling movements the past few days. Once, she’d wondered if he was sick or if the staff had even moved him to a different enclosure. But that noise had confirmed he was still locked up next to her.

Roni pressed a canine tooth into her lower lip. He had been her original ally. The one who was just as desperate to escape as she was — perhaps more so. She’d been pragmatic back there about opening up to Zara because it was potentially beneficial.

Could she truly be so choosy about who her allies were? Perhaps … she needed to re-establish a connection with Valeantris. She didn’t truly need to feel warm towards him — just fake it as long as necessary.

A plan started blossoming in her mind. If she had him as an ally again, maybe she could at least rig the fight in her favor.

She sat up, narrowing her eyes as she imagined his outline on the other side of the wall. He originally established a connection, but she was the one that broke it. Maybe she could link them together again.

Roni searched her mind for that invisible string that their conversations ran along. Then — there. She felt it curled up on itself, like a ball of wadded-up yarn. She pushed at it with her mind, trying to nudge the knots free. It wasn’t as difficult to unknot as her mother’s knitting projects. With gentle mental fingers, she pulled it free of its tangle.

Once free, it was like the end of it pressed against the very edge of her skull. The link was seeking out its former partner. With another mental nudge, she directed it to the V’rakiss that sat against the far wall.  
  
The invisible string floated ahead like it was pulled toward a magnet. Roni shuddered and gasped when it contacted another mind. A flashing spark zipped along the mental link, and in that instant, a heavy weight pressed down on her chest — immeasurable grief and despair flooded through her veins and neurons, washing her mind free of any personal concerns.

All she would ever know was this cage, the taste of bland, boneless meat, and the insistent tug of hands clad in cloves encircling her limbs in chains and her snout in a mesh muzzle. An endless eternity of this wound before her, a plodding parade of cruel fools jabbing at her for their study and amusement.

Perhaps one day they would grow weary of her and dispatch of her so that her body could be pulled apart for dissection and further scientific study.

Then, the torrent of desolation rushed away from her, surging back across the link. Roni slapped a hand to her chest, lungs pumping hard to pull in fresh air. Bile rose up the back of her throat.   
  
Those hadn’t been her thoughts or her own emotions. She’d only felt them once she made contact with Valeantris. Was that a glimpse into his mind? That had never happened before.

Her hand trembled as she withdrew it from her chest and lowered it to the mattress.

 _' … Valeantris?’_ She tentatively sent the thought along the connection.

Instead of a deluge of wordless feelings, a single sound was sent in response: _‘Roni?’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thing 1: The next few updates might be a little slower because I have some separate short writing projects I'd like to work a bit on in addition to Savage Beauty. But I'm still going to update regularly.
> 
> Thing 2: I have a playlist for chapters 1-9 of this story! Listen here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfMPuX2tIcQ&list=PL58tacsYmfJY5VKLfmBZGf9pNSIiCIqSN&index=4  
> The synthwave music is supposed to more represent Roni as well as the setting of the McKnight Industries facility.
> 
> The violin and piano pieces are meant to represent Valeantris and his inner emotional state.
> 
> Thing 3: If you are interested, I've got a Twitter over at @ ladyofwolfsbane. I post about writing, reading, monsters, fandoms I like, and retweet a variety of things I just think are cool.


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